Common Core an uncommonly bad idea

By RON KAUFFMANFrom the Right

Wednesday

Dec 4, 2013 at 12:01 AM

To hear local educators talk about Common Core, you’d think American schools, currently ranked 22nd in the world of education, will finally have the federal government step in and save our schools, our children and our future. A quick aside — I’d like to point out that nowhere in the U.S. Constitution does it say the federal government is responsible for educating our children.

To hear local educators talk about Common Core, you’d think American schools, currently ranked 22nd in the world of education, will finally have the federal government step in and save our schools, our children and our future. A quick aside — I’d like to point out that nowhere in the U.S. Constitution does it say the federal government is responsible for educating our children.Can you name a single program run by the federal government that has proven successful? By successful, I mean one that has remained within projected budget, isn’t going broke, hasn’t become a bloated federal bureaucracy or hasn’t proven to be an outright boondoggle. Common Core is just one more of those nice-sounding “the government is here to help” programs that will turn out to be a false promise.Common Core is a federally subsidized education program comprised of a testing standards platform for students to ensure that they are “properly” educated. Digging a little deeper, we find that Common Core is really a blatant grab by the liberal bureaucracy of entire education programs. They are taking away control from teachers, parents and students and putting education under a progressive agenda.In a recent interview, N.C. Lt. Gov. Dan Forest, who sits on the State Board of Education, said, “I am unclear how education with a national one-size-fits-all standard will serve our students well and allow our parents the ability to be engaged in educational decisions.”In a letter sent in July to State School Superintendent June Atkinson, Forest asked, “Here we are four years into the acceptance of Common Core, and there is no budget in place to say this is what it’s going to cost us. No one can give me an answer on even the assessment and how it will be implemented. It’s a significant cost burden to the state, to the county and so forth that hasn’t been addressed at all.”Other opponents of Common Core have some interesting objections, as cited last year by syndicated columnist Michelle Malkin:u Common Core’s muddled (math) standards would leave American students at least two years behind the rest of the planet, according to James Milgram, professor emeritus at Stanford University and a member of the Common Core math standards committee.u Common Core’s English standards will result in teachers spending at least 50 percent of reading instruction time on “informational texts,” reduced emphasis on analytical skills involving complex literary works, and a depleted fund of content knowledge that will leave students unprepared for basic college coursework, according to professor Sandra Stotsky, University of Arkansas and member of the Common Core language arts validation panel.The government says the program isn’t mandatory. That’s true, but why are states adopting Common Core? Is it a better approach to delivering a good education? No, it’s because the government knows that states and local education programs are financially strapped. Its offer of huge federal dollars is like the lure of the sirens in James Joyce’s “Ulysses” and can’t be resisted. North Carolina received a $400 million federal “Race to the Top” grant in 2010.Liberals are behind this, but both parties are culpable, as is “big business” because there’s lot of money at stake here. As Malkin noted, people like Jeb Bush are pushing this plan not because Jeb cares more about your children than you do, but because he, like Al Gore before him with his carbon credit scam, stands to make a ton of money if Common Core is rolled out nationwide using the companies in which Mr. Bush is a major investor.

Frank Till, Cumberland County’s superintendent, stated, “I think everyone realizes that if we are going to be a competitive country, our students need to be able to compete not just against each other but with the kids in Singapore and anywhere else.” Till worked in Florida when Common Core was adopted during then-Gov. Jeb Bush’s tenure.It’s amusing to hear educators saying they no longer want to announce valedictorians because it’s just not fair that only one person be recognized as outstanding. In a growing number of elementary schools, games like tag and dodgeball aren’t allowed to be played, and sports that have scores are sometimes forbidden because we certainly can’t have winners and losers. Today we want a common outcome with everyone a winner. Schools can’t allow little Johnny or Susie to have hurt feelings by the realities of life and find out that not everyone is a winner. Yet Till talks about making our schools competitive so we can compete as a nation. Sorry, but you can’t have it both ways.Our children are our most precious asset. Theirs are the shoulders of hope upon which we place the future of our country. Do you really want them educated under an untested, federally endorsed and funded program that strives to make all our children — the gifted and the less talented — achieve at the same level and outcome?Think about it. Get involved at your kid’s school and attend school board and county commissioner meetings. Don’t let others take from you one of the most important elements of control of your children’s future — their education.

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